


the beller house

by cirque



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Murder Mystery, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24668665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: “Once upon a time you didn’t believe in zombies. Now what? We eat zombies for breakfast. Why not ghosts?"
Relationships: Chris Redfield & Claire Redfield
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vachtar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vachtar/gifts).



> Your kingdom for Chris and Claire getting to work together! Here, have some lovely Redfield bonding and a thinly-held-together ghostly mystery. Thank you for the prompts, I enjoyed writing this!

Chris didn’t believe in ghosts. Zombies, sure, why not? Great big monsters made of ooze and crap and the stink of infection, he could accept that. But ghosts? No way. Absolutely not. And a house supposedly haunted by ghosts, conveniently situated on the edge of a long-forgotten town, a cabin lurking in the woods? Definitely not.

“Oh, come on!” Claire wheedled, leaning on his shoulder. She had that look in her eyes, the same look she got when she suggested a weekend of paintballing or that one time they all took a vacation to Bali.

“No,” he said, but even as he said it he knew he was fighting a losing battle.

“ _ Please. _ C’mon, it’ll be just a quick thing. In and out. It’s probably some errant BOW getting drunk off fear. Or ghosts, could be ghosts… We’ll put it down and be home in time for dinner.”

Chris had not thought his sister to be the type of person to suggest monster-hunting for  _ fun.  _ “Why are you so invested in this?”

She stepped away from him. “I showed you the Craigslist ad, didn’t I?”

Chris nodded; she had. The ad had been written anonymously, and claimed there were ghosts in the old Beller house, situated in a clearing deep in the woods. Locals had reported hauntings, honest-to-god hauntings in broad daylight. Things disappeared, weird sounds echoed from the ramshackled house’s smashed windows, someone’s cat had turned up dead. It sounded like a stunt to Chris, kids or addicts or whatever, but Claire--Claire was insisting on ghosts.

“Imagine if we get proof,” she said.

“You’re insane,” Chris replied. “My sister is insane.”

“Once upon a time you didn’t believe in zombies. Now what? We eat zombies for breakfast. Why not ghosts?”

He knew he wasn’t getting out of this one. “Alright,” he said at last, “I’ll come with you. But it’s just a quick trip, and I won’t wear my uniform. There’s no way I’m tarnishing my damn B.S.A.A. uniform on a  _ ghost hunt _ .”

They took Chris’s car. He put the top down and they drove towards the hills with the wind in their hair. The whole place smelled of grass and goodness, something homey in the air. Claire sat beside him in the passenger seat with her head thrown back, sunglasses on, a goofy smile plastered on her face. She looked seventeen again. This could be good for them, he thought. It’d be a chance to forget the chaos that was their everyday life. TerraSave, B.S.A.A, Sherry and Simmons,  _ Jill _ \- a good old fashioned adventure. So what if it turned out to be a hoax, if it ended in them calling the LEO’s on some local? Claire would enjoy it, and that was all the reason Chris needed.

The trees closed in on them and the road got steadily less and less recognizable, until eventually they were driving on a dirt track composed mainly of fallen twigs and, noticeably, a series of molehills. It got darker with every yard they drove, until eventually Chris was getting worried about visibility. If a damn deer came out and gutted the pair of them… Twenty minutes in they had to roll the top back up because it was raining pine needles, and several of them had got lodged down the back of Chris’s shirt.

Eventually the trail petered out and the house loomed before them. It was one of those rickety old places, carved out of logs, with a roof that had buckled long ago, a single-story death-trap waiting to happen. It sure was no Spencer Mansion. It looked sorry, forgotten, the kind of place where even zombies wouldn’t stay. There was mold blooming over the door lintel. 

“Well. We’re here.” said Chris.

Claire ignored his obvious jab and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. She scrolled for a while before clearing her throat. “The Old Beller House,” she read, “Abandoned since ‘98. Once the domicile of Mr and Mrs Beller, from a family with roots back to the Civil War. Mr Beller murdered his wife and two children in ‘97 and absconded into the woods for nine days in which he was hunted by police and SWAT until he was eventually found floating in a lake, his body swollen with water. His throat had been cut, but there was no weapon found and in the end it wasn’t ruled as a suicide. No suspect was ever found.”

“Typical backwoods,” Chris interjected, and she shushed him.

She scrolled some more. “The house was sold to a young couple the next town over in ‘98. They reported hearing rats in the walls, and a strange smell coming from the smaller of two bedrooms. Exterminators confirmed there was no infestation. They gradually decided they were being haunted, and called in a priest, who declared them as suffering from a shared madness. Police referred them to a psychiatrist who confirmed a  _ folie à deux _ . In the fall of ‘98, the new owners disappeared after less than a year of owning the place. Since then locals have reported strange sounds, ghostly apparitions in the surrounding area, the usual. And, according to a Craigslist ad posted eighteen hours ago, a young boy went missing while exploring the house with friends. He went in to use the bathroom and vanished,  _ kaput. _ His friends reported him missing to police but of course they’re refusing to treat the disappearance as supernatural. The ad calls for ‘ghostbusters’ who are willing to take the history of the Beller house seriously. The photo is of the boy who went missing, Tanner Collins--” she handed the phone to him. It was a school photograph of a grinning seventh-grader with hair that was slicked back.

“How long has he been missing?”

“Two days.”

“And there are--what?--three mysteries here?”

“Correct.”

“The murder of the original Mr Beller, the disappearance of the next owners, and the disappeared boy.”

“Correct.”

“And you want us to solve this on our day off? Jeez Claire.”

She got out the car and fixed him with A Look. "Could be worse," she said over her shoulder. "Could be the apocalypse."

"What, again?" Chris joined her on the wooden veranda that wrapped around the house. He checked his gun, and checked his B.S.A.A badge that would get him out of trouble if law enforcement got involved, and looked at his sister. 

"I dunno how you want to play this," he said. 

Claire shrugged and knocked on the door. It swung perilously on its hinges, threatening to give up. A plume of dust sprayed from it and Chris coughed pointedly. 

"Hello!" Claire called. "Anyone here? We just want to ask a few questions."

He prayed she wasn't talking to the ghosts, but who else could she be talking to? 

She pushed aside the door and together they stepped over the threshold. The first room was a living room, dusty and rat-ruined, consisting of a moldy couch and a TV that probably didn't even pick up color. There were unrecognizable photographs dotted around the walls and the rug had curled up at the corners, revealing rotted floorboards. Through the dislodged door they could see a kitchen; it looked as though there had been a fire, decades back, the remains of it staining the wall. 

Chris couldn't see what good his gun would do. The biggest threat was probably raccoons, or tetanus. He sighed and made sure Claire saw him roll his eyes. 

"Don't piss off the ghosts, Christopher."

"Are you sure you can't leave this with the police? Let them investigate. We're probably trespassing on their crime scene." He cast about for signs of cops. 

"That's what  _ this _ \--" she tapped the badge in his hand, "--is for." She scowled at him. "Spread out," she said. "Check for clues."

“Didn’t the cops search this place?”

“Yes, of course, but the Craigslist ad suggests they weren’t thorough enough.”

“Oh, the holy Craigslist ad?”

“The law enforcement refused to acknowledge any link between Tanner’s disappearance and the Beller house. They’re searching the wider area, but not in here. Spread out,” she repeated.

They diverged in the living room. Chris pulled aside the severed fabric of the couch. It felt wet and sticky. A writhing pile of insects undulated from within, spilling out onto his boots. 

"Can we just admit," he called to his sister, who was digging around in the closet. "That it isn't ghosts?" 

"Well, what is it then? Huh?" She emerged holding an ancient vacuum cleaner. It rattled as she tugged it free. 

"I dunno," said Chris, "But there's footprints here, in the dust. Do ghosts leave footprints?" He pointed for her. Fresh tracks on the floor, running strides and then, by the basement hatch, a dragging motion. Claire abandoned the vacuum cleaner and came to stand beside him. 

"No, but lost boys do. Looks like we're going downstairs. After you."

"Wait. Something dragged the boy down there and you want us to join them?"

"We  _ are  _ here to rescue him."

"Alright, alright," he grumbled, and lifted the hatch open. It took some doing; it was crusted over in places with mold. As he pulled, the hinges gave out an almighty screech that echoed in the still air. Claire winced. 

There were stairs leading downwards and Chris began his descent, but he barely trusted the wood not to give way beneath his feet. The basement stank of decay and dust, and something sweeter besides. It reminded him forcibly of another creepy house, and he tried to suppress the memory. Once he was on solid ground again he fetched his flashlight from his waist pack. Illuminated, the basement was just as dilapidated as the upstairs. 

There was a collection of trunks in the far corner, surrounded by old curtains, rugs, moth-eaten relics. 

His eyes caught on something shiny, and he headed over to investigate as Claire dropped down the hatch. She went straight for the bones, her face twisted in grief.

Chris crossed to the far wall, upon which was stuck an array of postcards, post-it notes, and newspaper cuttings. Traditional conspiracy nut stuff, but his eyes were drawn to a curled up yellowing newspaper. 'Raccoon City and Terragrigia,' it read, 'hoax or history?' There were photographs of both outbreaks, and Chris found himself staring at a picture of Raccoon's hospital, pre-apocalypse. He'd spent the better part of New Year's Eve in there, waiting while Forest got a broken ankle seen to. They were drunk, and clumsy with it, just carefree kids who had no idea, really, about anything. He was mesmerized, looking at the old place after all these years. 

"Fuck it," Chris groaned internally. Would he ever be free? 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The legendary Claire Redfield.”

“It was supposed to be just a light-hearted trip, y’know. It was supposed to be ghosts,” Claire said, in a sad little voice.

“I know.” He slipped his cell phone back into his pocket. “They said there’s no reason to mobilize a task force just yet. I’m supposed to stay and investigate further.” It had been hell trying to get a connection, they’d had to drive out of the woodland, and even then it was spotty. "Are you alright to team up?" 

"Yay," Claire rolled her eyes. “They can’t investigate just because we got creeped out,” she pointed out. “And what evidence do we have, exactly? Plenty of people collect bioterrorism memorabilia. There’s a whole market for it, did you know?”

It was an unsettling thought, but not a new one. 

“Do plenty of people have entire walls in their decrepit basements dedicated to it? Their basements in creepy cabins in the woods with no less than three criminal mysteries?” he asked. 

“Good point,” she slouched a little in her seat. They’d found a Starbucks nearby and Claire was clutching her mocha to her as though it was giving her life. Chris regarded his own with distrust. He wasn’t sure what she’d ordered for him, but it looked hipsterish.

Chris started up the car. “Let’s head back to the house. We still haven’t found any sign of Tanner, beyond the footprints. If the B.S.A.A wants us to investigate then we will, just keep it low key.”

The trees enclosed around them again. The sun was still high in the sky, but clouds were threatening rain or maybe thunder. He guided the car down the old dirt road until they came to the creepy house. They hopped out and made their way into the dusty old living room, and back down into the basement. 

Chris went back to the creepy wall. It seemed he had missed a lot in his first glance; looking now he could see various newspaper cuttings regarding Umbrella and TriCell. There was a whole section dedicated to the Umbrella trials, a photograph of O'Brien blinking in the spotlight. Chris looked at it with dim fascination. There, in the top right corner, was a scientific drawing of a Licker, complete with anatomically-correct ooze.

“Who collects all this crap?” he said and Claire murmured something faintly. Her attention was focused on the collection of rugs covering the floor.

"Sad people, I guess," she shrugged. “There’s something not right about these rugs.” 

Chris nudged aside the one covering the space near the wall. The floor beneath was cold and, as he took a few steps, he noticed it sounded hollow. Claire heard it too, and shined the light on the floorboards.

“I think there’s something under here,” he said.

“The basement has a basement?” 

Chris stomped on the floor some more. The floorboards creaked, and he dropped to his knees. He pulled back the wood; it came easily, so mold-ridden was it. As he pulled aside the first floorboard, he saw the slick wet flicker of human skin, bared teeth, a maggot crawling into an eye socket. His sister leaned in, and they gasped together.

“Claire, there’s a body.” Moving a second and third floorboard out the way, they got down to the hard-packed dirt and muck. Chris dug muck clear of the body. Worms undulated in the sunken chest, the ribs crushed by the weight of all the soil. It stank of familiar rotting flesh, the sweet musk of decay. Its jaw, so small he realized, was open in an endless scream.

“They buried him alive,” he whispered.

He was wearing blue jeans and a baseball shirt, and a well-worn cap that had fallen to the side. In the hand was a cell-phone, covered in dirt, the faded out screen still on. He’d tried to make a 911 call before he’d died, but there had been no reception, no rescue. 

“It’s Tanner,” Claire said in a small voice. 

“Suffocated to death, I’ll bet.” 

“They buried him  _ alive? _ ” Her voice was tight and hoarse. “We gotta find out who did this.”

“We will,” he insisted.

He stood up, leaving his sister crouching over the boy’s corpse. He ran his hand along the walls, skirting around the suspicious creepy wall. He came to a shelving unit carrying a variety of old sport’s memorabilia, several signed baseballs but Chris didn’t know enough about the sport to comment. He tapped the wall behind it, twice.

Claire’s head cocked up at the sound. “Secret room,” she called out. “I knew it.”

“You knew it?” he said in disbelief, and she shrugged.

Chris took his gun from the holster, flicking the safety off as he went. Claire reached out to his belt and unsheathed his knife. He pushed aside the display cabinet, several golfing trophies falling off in the process. Behind the cabinet was a smooth metal door. It all felt awfully familiar.

The door had a keypad to type in the code. 

“Any ideas?” asked Chris.

Claire pushed him aside, and tapped out a number: 9804. The keypad went green with agreement.

“9804?” Chris frowned.

“Dates of RC and Terragrigia outbreaks. I figured: they’re a groupie, right? Whoever this is?”

“Good thinking,” he nodded and grasped the handle, pulling the door outwards. Claire hot on his heels, they stepped together into a white, shining room. There were logos emblazoned on every available space, the familiar red and white.

“Uh oh,” said Claire, but that didn’t even begin to cover it.

Patrick Oliver was one of the B.S.A.A’s up-and-coming new recruits, a twenty-something with shiny boots and a haircut that made the ladies drool. Chris had worked with him a few times, though they’d never partnered up. He found him standoffish, in a way that made Chris a little uncomfortable. In his experience, people who acted like they had something to hide usually did.

Still, when Patrick arrived later that afternoon with a truck full of colleagues, Chris was grateful to see a familiar face. Claire had been ushered away from the house and was sitting on the dirt floor filling in paperwork, of all things.

Patrick raised a hand in greeting. “Officer Redfield.” He was wearing the blue uniform, with the neatly stitched badges that Chris and Jill had poured over once upon a time, selecting their favorites. They’d argued, he remembered, over something so silly. In the end they’d gone with Jill’s pick, and it hurt Chris to look at it now like a sword of ice plunging through his chest. God, he missed her.

Chris nodded, pushing the feelings away. “Oliver. Thanks for mobilizing so quickly.”

“Hey, when  _ the  _ Chris Redfield says we got a situation, then we got a situation.”

Chris and Claire spent an anxious few hours awaiting the B.S.A.A, sitting in a diner cupping mugs of too-thick coffee that tasted like grit; everything in the diner was chequered or formica, and there was a TV in the corner from the dark ages, playing music videos.  _ Music videos.  _ They jumped up when they saw the familiar logo on trucks going by. The locals were muttering as they left the diner; talk would spread fast of Tanner’s death.

“Backwoods crazies bury a seventh-grader alive. That’s what it looks like.” Chris said.

“And the Umbrella logo?”

“That I’m less certain of. It seems they venerated past outbreaks. There was a shrine.”

Oliver cocked his head. “You ever come across anything like this before, sir?”

“Never.” There’d been veneration, of course, anyone who thrived on terror had to have some degree of veneration for their line of work. Umbrella certainly, and Veltro too--but those were organizations, and they’d aimed for chaos. This whole situation was so small-scale, so understated. Their only victim in years was a pre-teen boy, and three random locals. It didn’t add up. 

Oliver seemed to be thinking the same. He pulled a tablet from his backpack at his feet. He brought up the local newspage. “The locals haven’t mentioned anything that pinged our bioterror algorithms. Nothing untoward. No random deaths, no spooky mutations. Not even so much as a localised fever outbreak.”

That was odd. “I’m not sure how much use the B.S.A.A will be,” said Chris, casting his eyes over the small crowd of officers, at the center of which sat his sister, worrying over a clipboard. 

“We’ll take a look around,” Oliver said, “Ask a few questions in the town. If there are no red flags, we’ll hand the boy’s murder over to the local law enforcement. The secret Umbrella lab, however, will need thorough investigation.”

“Tomorrow,” he said in a strained voice. God, he was tired. “Good job, Oliver.” Chris dismissed the younger man and crossed over to Claire. The crowd parted for him, the juniors nodding curtly to him. He commanded a certain level of respect, even in jeans and a tee. 

He towered above Claire, sitting there in the dirt.

“You’re in my light,” she said, without looking up. 

He moved a couple steps to the left. “Paperwork, huh?”

“I’ve had three people ask for my autograph.”

“The legendary Claire Redfield.”

“Shut up.” She returned to her incident report. She was writing in small curly letters that Chris had always admired. His own handwriting was infuriatingly difficult to read, even for him. Chicken scratches, Jill had called it.

“Should I mention the ghosts?” Claire’s voice pulled him back into focus.

He crouched down beside her, looking over her shoulder. “Maybe under ‘local oddities’? The locals certainly believe it’s ghosts. I’d say it’s relevant.”

She went silent, concentrating on writing. Any good humor she had been in had been sapped by the discovery of the boy’s body. The sun was low in the sky, which was purpled and bruised, and a little orange around the edges. It would set soon.

“Do you want to finish that in the car? I have to find us a motel.”

She got up wordlessly, swiping the dirt from her legs. They walked back to the car in silence.

“Claire, listen--”

“There’s nothing I could have done. I know.” She slammed the door in his face and leaned back in her seat, pale and gloomy.

He sat in the driver’s seat. “I’m not starting this car until you talk to me.”

“Okay,  _ dad. _ I could have done something earlier. I...”

“It was me who didn’t want to come at first. Imagine if I’d said ‘yes’ earlier. Though by the looks of things, Tanner died shortly after he disappeared. What we can do is solve this mystery, and bring his killers to justice. Or, y’know, put them down if it is bioterrorism related.”

“How many more innocents will die?” There were horrors in her eyes, even now.

“We can’t save them all Claire.” But wasn’t that the problem? There was no saving everybody; hell, they could barely save  _ any  _ people. He thought of Jill, the look on her face as she’d charged Wesker, the sound of the window breaking. It had been over a year, why wasn’t it getting any easier?

Claire seemed to be thinking the same because she gave him a wan smile. He started the car with an uneasy feeling in his stomach and she refocused on her clipboard, the calm silence settling over them like a blanket.

She spoke up when they were on the outskirts of town. “Oh god, has anyone told Tanner’s mom?”

“I don't--”

“Where does she live?”

“I think the townsfolk have set up base in the church. They’re coordinating the search from there. You can’t talk to her Claire.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because this is a sensitive operation. We don’t know exactly what happened, if there’s a BOW on the loose or what. This is under B.S.A.A supervision now.”

“Tanner’s mom might be able to help the investigation.”

Chris knew his sister. He knew she’d go and see Tanner’s mother no matter how strongly he forbade it. It was something he admired about her, but there was so much red tape for her to fight through.

“Drive to the church,” she said, as though that was that. 

“Claire--”

“Drive to the church or I’ll get out and walk.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "No names, Redfield."

He didn’t put up much of a fight. He found himself guiding the car down busy streets. People were carrying on as normal, carrying groceries, corralling children. It didn’t look like a town in the midst of a bioterror crisis, but then even RC had kept calm and carried on.

The church loomed ahead of them. It was one of those colonial-time ones, with a tall dark steeple, and great thick stained glass windows. As they approached, Chris found himself focusing on an image of the Virgin Mary, crying at her son’s execution.

Claire was out before he’d even killed the engine, and he jogged to keep up with her. She threw open the heavy wooden doors and surveyed the scene before them.

At least a hundred people were gathered in the pews and in the aisle, and congregated around the font at the head of the building. They’d set up tables and chairs, coffee stations, a TV which was repeating the same short news story about Tanner’s disappearance.

Claire headed to one of the tables, talking in a low voice to an elderly man, who eventually pointed a woman in the crowd out to her. Chris and Claire walked together over to Tanner’s mother, who was clutching at her throat, tears flowing free.

“Mrs Collins?” Claire said, in her work voice. “My name is Claire Redfield. I work for an organization called TerraSave, perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

She evidently had, and gasped, looking between Chris and Claire desperately. “Have you found my boy?”

Claire kept her voice steady. “Mrs Collins, we have some terrible news. We discovered--”

But anything Claire was going to say was diminished by Mrs Collins’s wail of distress, and she fell to her knees. Claire got down beside her, and tried to comfort the woman.

“Mrs Collins, we’ll do everything we can. We have a whole task force dedicated to solving the mystery surrounding your son’s death.”

“You think he was mu-murdered?”

“I’m afraid it looks that way.”

“But-but… who would _do_ that? Tanner never hurt anyone. He was just a little boy.” Mrs Collins’s mind seemed to clear then, because she looked at Claire with newfound surety. 

“TerraSave? That’s… war crimes isn’t it? What does that have to do with my son?”

Claire looked up at Chris for guidance, who shook his head. Better the woman thought it was some lone ranger with a black heart, than start a panic by announcing an outbreak of some kind, especially when they didn’t know all the facts.

Claire said nothing, and Mrs Collins’s was approached by a small group of sobbing women who had been listening in. They enveloped her in hugs, and Claire stood up again.

“It doesn’t feel right, not telling her the truth.”

“We can tell her more when we know it,” Chris pointed out. “For now, let's find a hotel. I could sleep for a week.”

Claire nodded and together they wove their way through the townsfolk gathered in the church, returning to the car. The sun sat low in the sky, its last few rays determined not to shirk their duty.

Opening the driver-side door, he smelled blood. Blood and decay, so familiar to him now. He saw the shadow in the backseat. He looked at Claire, calm and steady, as if to say ‘it’s on’ and she nodded back, and winked. She got into the passenger seat and waited.

Chris took his seat and counted the seconds, until eventually Claire gave a little gasp of faux surprise. There was a knife held to her throat, a rusty old butcher’s knife.

“Don’t move,” said the man in the backseat. He was actually wearing a balaclava, Chris noted with faint disinterest. Chris was bored of unimaginative villains. He went to grab his gun, performatively, but the man took a slice out of Claire’s neck. The red blood pooled and dripped down onto the collar of her white shirt.

“Let me go, please,” she said, doing a decent job of sounding afraid. She even managed to squeeze out a tear or two. She was good, his sister, very convincing.

“Don’t move,” warned the man, “Or I’ll hit the carotid next.”

Did this guy even know where it was? Chris tried not to roll his eyes. “What d’you want?”

“Drive,” said the genius holding them captive. “To the Beller house.” 

Again? Chris was starting to feel like a hamster in a wheel. He started the engine and eased the vehicle down the main street. The businesses had shut up shop now, and all the lights inside were off, leaving only street lights guiding their way, orange and glowy, some flickering in place. Chris slowed to let a rat cross, and the guy growled, an actual honest to God growl.

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“No names, Redfield.”

Chris could not contain his laugh, but he managed to segue into a cough. “That puts us at a disadvantage. You clearly know who we are.”

“You _should_ be at a disadvantage, I’m taking you prisoner.”

“Are you going to ransom us?” Ransom was the oldest trick in the book; how boring.

“I’ll ask the questions,” said the mystery kidnapper, and pressed down on Claire’s neck again. “Hurry up.”

Chris obeyed the speed limit, and it was fifteen tense and awkward minutes until they arrived at Chez Beller, for the third time that day. Chris killed the engine and turned back to look at their kidnapper. Claire looked like she was about to go feral on his ass, and he looked at her. _Keep calm,_ he urged, _let this play out. We need answers._

The B.S.A.A had abandoned shop for the night; there was the familiar blue and white tape stretched around the perimeter and someone had left a security camera rigged up. Chris knew there were cameras and microphones inside too, so any answers they managed to tease from this man would be picked up at HQ.

They walked single file into the decrepit house, dust plumes flying skyward at the weight of their feet. The kidnapper pressed down on Claire’s neck again, and more blood trickled free.

“On the mantelpiece. Zip ties. Tie your sister up.”

Zip ties? Was this guy a total rookie? Chris shook his head and followed instructions, tying Claire’s wrists together with ease.

Their kidnapper huffed. “Now--” but he stopped, and frowned. “Dammit. Stay there while I tie you up.”

Chris waited patiently, almost tapping his foot like Mickey Mouse. This guy was laughably bad. It was almost boring, being kidnapped by him. He even left the zip ties loose enough for Chris to break them with a downward swing of his arms, if he wanted. He slipped Chris’s gun from its holster and took Claire’s new knife too. He pushed Chris and Claire down on their knees in the living room, and Chris felt a splinter enter the thick skin of his left knee.

“What do you know about Tanner Collins’s disappearance?” Claire asked.

Chris raised his eyebrows; he guessed they were diving straight in. “What is your interest in biohazard outbreaks?” he countered.

The man knelt down in front of them, a gleeful look on his pasty face. “I’m just--such a--fan!”

“Of…?” Chris didn’t get it.

“Of you! Of bioterrorism! Of Umbrella and TriCell! Of Spencer and Marcus and Birkin and Wesker! The famous Redfields, here, in my town! This is perfect--” He rambled on.

“Ah,” said Claire as though it all made sense. She looked at Chris as if to say “he’s crazy” and Chris nodded his agreement.

“You’re a… fan?” Chris asked.

“You posted the Craigslist ad,” Claire stated, “You kidnapped and murdered Tanner. You’ve been perpetuating rumors of ghosts for years now, haven’t you?”

“Anything to lure you here!” he cackled. “I was hoping it would be Barry Burton, y’know, but you pair are decent enough. Oh, Claire, you’re even smarter than I dreamed. But, I think, not smart enough.”

They’d got their confession, and everything was starting to make a sick kind of sense. But what about the other disappearances in the town?

“What’s with the Umbrella lab?” Chris asked, performatively nonchalant.

“Oh that,” he said dismissively, “It’s just for show. I had it commissioned sometime in ‘03. I tried to get everything down to the exact specifications. How close is it?”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “Pretty damn.” He was imagining this guy sitting down there, surrounded by his memorabilia. There were monsters in the world alright.

“Wonderful! They were working from photos, y’know, the ones they showed on the TV. Hey, what was it like, being so close to Wesker?”

Chris felt sick at the mention of him. The cold clammy feel of his hands around his throat, the sound of the window breaking, the thirty-three long minutes he’d spent in utter silence while backup arrived.

His voice was flat. “Wesker’s dead.”

“I know--I heard. Tragic, really.”

“What do you want with us?” Chris said. He doubted the guy was after their autographs.

“Just--just to talk,” his eyes were bloodshot and shiny. He looked half-infected himself. Chris knew then that there was no reasoning with this man. His obsession into bio-terror had driven him to the brink. He was sick with it, too far gone. They would get no sense from him.

Chris snapped the zip ties in one smooth moment and was on his feet in the blink of an eye. He wrestled his gun free of the man’s hand and took aim at his chest. “The game’s over,” he said.

Rather than the appropriate fear at having a gun trained on him, the man looked delighted. He rubbed his hands together like a kid in a candy store. “Classic Chris Redfield!” he giggled, and when Claire snapped herself free too he giggled again, high and trilling.

“You kidnapped us just to talk?”

“Well, it was the only way to get you to listen…” the man scowled, then brightened. “Hey, what’s it like, being face to face with the infected? What do they _smell_ like? Are they sentient, or--or what?”

The guy was a fanboy, an honest to god bio-terrorism fanboy in backwoods America. Chris sighed. He crossed the room and fetched another couple of zip ties, securing the man’s hands behind his back with no push-back--in fact, he was enjoying himself, a look of unadulterated glee taking over his pasty face.

Claire had been watching them, and she spoke up. “You’re Mr Beller, the original owner of this house.”

“I thought he was dead?” Chris asked.

“They found a body,” the man chuckled, “All worm-eaten and swollen from the lake.”

Claire raised her eyebrows. “It looked enough like you to fool police? It was the nineties, so forensics weren’t top notch, especially this far into the wilderness. And you’ve been hiding here ever since, hiding in the woods?” Going crazier and crazier by the sounds of things.

“It was more of the eighties really,” said Beller. “The nineties didn’t get here ‘til after the millennium.”

Beller did not object when Chris pushed him out the door, onto the abandoned lawn beyond. He threw his cell phone to Claire, but there was no reception and she frowned.

“We’ll have to drive into town,” she said.

“Fine by me,” said Beller, looking more and more excited by the second. This was probably a dream come true for him, Chris thought, perhaps his wildest fantasy. Chris shoved Beller into the backseat. 

“Are you going to be any trouble?” he asked.

“No chance,” said Beller, a look of unbridled hunger in his eyes. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

“Right,” Chris rolled his eyes. He’d met some… colorful folk in his career, the mad and the desperate and the plain rotten, but this? This was something else. So weird, he found himself thinking. It was a sick kind of irony that he would be handed over to the regular cops, a regular jail cell, twenty-to-life of sticky oatmeal and crappy outreach programs. He’d never even be questioned by the B.S.A.A. He could tell this was not the ending Beller had imagined.

Claire kept trying the cops as they drove, and when they crested the treeline she finally got through. She spoke in a low voice, explaining everything, and placing extra emphasis on the evidence collected at the house. The police seemed cowed to hear of the B.S.A.A’s involvement, it wasn’t every day bioterrorism came to the woods, even as innocuous as this. Claire hung up and turned back in her seat to look at Beller. She looked most displeased.

“I hope you’ve got a good lawyer.” 

“I was declared dead!” he hooted.

“A state-appointed lawyer it is,” she said grimly.

The waitress brought the coffee. It was thick as sludge, and tasted gritty, but Chris gulped it down all the same. In the booth opposite him, Claire regarded hers with distrust.

The diner was all high-shine white and red, too familiar. _‘Bleeding Love’_ was playing somewhere nearby, behind the counter perhaps. It sounded tinny and crackled, as though the CD was skipping in places.

They were slouched in a booth, awaiting the B.S.A.A. Beller had been handed over to local law enforcement and was hopefully facing a serious jail sentence. It was out of their hands now. They’d both provided statements.

“I can’t believe I thought it was ghosts,” said Claire, miserable. There were little crow's feet around her eyes; when had they both got old? Chris could scarcely believe it had been nine years since all this started. A decade, almost, of war. That was enough to tire anyone out.

“It would have been nice,” Chris mused. “A nice ghost mystery. Would have been interesting.”

“A poltergeist, even,” she said, “I wouldn’t complain.” 

“At least we got to team up, haven’t done that in a while.”

Claire smiled at him, a genuine full smile. He missed that smile. “Yeah. It was… nice… criminal activity notwithstanding.” 

“We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

She twirled a loose strand of hair around her fingers. They were both of them disheveled. 

“What a day, huh?” he said.

Claire shrugged. “What a life…”

“Yeah. Finish your coffee, I’ll drive you home.”

She gulped down the drink and he knew they’d both sleep restless and haunted, just another nightmare to add to what was turning out to be a real collection. He sighed. They didn’t pay him enough for this.


End file.
